Under a DACA amnesty, American taxpayers would be left with a $26 billion bill. About one in five DACA illegal aliens, after an amnesty, would end up on food stamps, while at least one in seven would go on Medicaid. Since DACA’s inception under Obama, more than 2,100 illegal aliens have been kicked off the program after it was revealed that they were either criminals or gang members. JOHN BINDER

By
Evan Winters
7 March 2016

On Tuesday, the United Steelworkers (USW) forced through a contract
for 2,200 locked-out workers at Allegheny Technologies Inc. (ATI). The
contract, which will end the over six-month lockout of ATI workers in
six states, gives in to all of ATI’s major demands, and in some cases is
actually worse than the contract ATI proposed at the beginning of the
lockout.
The contract essentially transforms the ATI workforce
into casual labor. Increased contracting and brutally arbitrary
scheduling practices allow ATI to exploit workers on its terms. Workers
and retirees face thousands of dollars in increased health care costs.
The elimination of defined-benefit pensions for new hires creates a
second tier of workers, which ATI and the USW plan to mobilize against
current workers and retirees in future contracts.
The contract
sets a precedent that will be exploited by employers across the country
as they seek to offload the crisis of capitalism onto the backs of
workers.
Even if no other information were available, one would
not need to look beyond the USW’s conduct during the ratification
process to know that the contract is a miserable betrayal. The USW and
ATI announced a tentative agreement February 22, more than a week after
unemployment benefits had expired for ATI workers. The USW then waited
until an informational meeting on Saturday, February 27, to release any
information about the contents of the contract.
At that meeting,
workers were presented with a self-serving summary, instead of a full
contract. Although retirees are deeply affected by the contract’s
provisions, they were not invited to the meeting. In a highly unusual
move, the USW invited steelworkers’ spouses to the meeting in a
transparent attempt to generate additional pressure for a “yes” vote.
ATI workers were given only three days to study the contract summary
before voting on Tuesday, March 1.
If the USW truly believed that
it had negotiated a good contract, there would have been no need to hide
the full contract and employ these bullying tactics.
The actual
contents of the contract summary confirm this assessment. Despite the
USW’s claims that the contract contains “virtually none of the drastic
concessions ATI sought to arbitrarily impose,” in fact the contract
summary released last Saturday is nothing more than a slightly edited
version of ATI’s August “last, best, and final offer.”
ATI’s most
egregious demands centered around increased health care costs for active
and retired workers, increased use of outside contractors, brutal
changes in scheduling rules, and the elimination of defined-benefit
pensions and health benefits for new hires.
The contract
introduces 10 percent health care cost-sharing for active employees,
with a $6,000 per year out-of-pocket maximum for families. This is a
major increase in health care payments for active ATI workers, although
ATI demanded even higher payments in its August offer.
Unlike
ATI’s August offer, the final contract directly attacks retiree medical
benefits. Non-Medicare-eligible retirees are now subject to the same 10
percent cost-sharing, along with an additional $45 per month in
premiums, a new $600 deductible and a $3,600 annual out-of-pocket
maximum. Those eligible for Medicare have an out-of-pocket maximum of
$3,400 per year.
In 2012, retirees sued over similar attacks in the 2007 and 2011 contracts, but the suit was dismissed by a federal judge.
The
contract also allows ATI to reduce its payments into the union-run
Voluntary Employee Benefits Account (VEBA), which pays for retiree
health benefits. While ATI will pay a fixed annual lump sum per retiree,
the company’s hourly contributions fall from $2.50 per hour worked by
active workers in 2016, to $1.00 in 2020. Fifty cents per hour of these
payments are taken directly out of the quarterly bonus workers formerly
received.
Even if payments remained the same, union control of the
VEBA gives USW executives an incentive to cut retiree benefits to boost
the profitability of this investment vehicle. With retiree health care
contingent on the hours worked by active workers, benefits will be
dependent on whether or not ATI schedules enough hours to fund the VEBA.
The
USW bizarrely claims that contractors are necessary to restart
production because of attrition during the lockout. They insist upon
this even as 420 workers from the idled Bagdad and Midland plants in
western Pennsylvania require transfers. The Brackenridge, Vandergrift,
and Louisville, Ohio mills were understaffed even before the lockout.
Most importantly, workers report that roughly 200 workers retired during
the lockout. Many did so prematurely for fear that they would lose
benefits under the new contract if they did not retire before the
deadline to do so under the old contract. By demoralizing and starving
these workers, the USW helped ATI downsize by getting rid of its most
experienced workers, using the resulting shortage of manpower to justify
its support for increased contracting.
As in the August offer,
contractors are allowed during so-called “surge” maintenance and repair
work. Specialized maintenance work can be contracted out under some
conditions. The contract states that “the non-core work of janitorial,
grounds-keeping, road maintenance services, and interior/exterior
building construction/maintenance be
contracted out as the number of current or incumbents performing such
work is reduced by attrition...” [emphasis added]. In the August offer,
the “be” was only a “may be,” meaning that the current language means
more contractors, not fewer.
In exchange, the USW has added
toothless provisions that the company train some workers in all
maintenance tasks so that “the Company does not become completely
dependent on contractors.”
Scheduling language is based on the
August offer. The key content remains unchanged. “Management may require
a work week consisting of non-consecutive workdays and/or workdays of
more or less than 8 consecutive hours.” In these cases, which can occur
with as little as 48 hours notice, workers will not be paid overtime,
but will instead be paid an ambiguous “premium time” wage.
ATI is
given free rein in its scheduling practices unless “[W]orkdays of
greater than 12 consecutive hours, and work weeks in excess of 48 hours
are regularly scheduled for 4 out of 6 weeks.” Notably, this section
does not limit non-consecutive workdays, which the August proposal did.
Workers can be forced to work up to 16 hour days with no notice under
“emergency situations,” agreed upon by ATI and the USW.
In
addition, ATI can impose “alternative work schedules” of 10-12 hours per
day. This requires the approval of 60 percent of the affected
workforce, which ATI and the USW will extort as needed.
As in the
August offer, new hires are denied defined-benefit pensions and retiree
health benefits, in favor of a grossly inadequate 401(k) account.
Workers will receive retirement account benefits of $2.65 per hour
worked, and $0.50 per hour to cover retirement health costs. This
creates a two-tiered benefit system. Many current ATI workers see this
for what it is: an attempt to create divisions between new hires and
themselves to push through even deeper benefit cuts in the future.
In
exchange for these concessions, the contract includes insulting
incentives. The signing bonus, identical to ATI’s July offer, consists
of $1,500 in March 2016, and $1,000 in 2019 and 2020. For workers
looking to recover from six months on lockout, $1,500 is totally
inadequate. What’s more, now that the USW has dropped its unfair labor
practices suit against ATI, workers have no chance of receiving back pay
to help recover.
The contract also includes a new profit-sharing
agreement that aims to further tie workers’ living standards to company
profits. A worker noted to the WSWS that when ATI introduced
profit-sharing in a previous contract, workers received a check the
first year, and never again, as ATI manipulated its books to conceal
profits.
The USW is presenting this rotten contract as a victory.
The contract summary begins with a hollow statement titled “How ATI’s
Assault on Our Contract Imploded.” To the extent that the USW does
acknowledge concessions in the contract, it blames them on “a flood of
illegal imports.” In other words, the USW blames Chinese steelworkers
for the ATI lockout. The solution to wage cuts, the USW claims, is to
fight for a “major overhaul” of US trade policy. In other words, if
workers want jobs, they should line up behind the corporations and the
Democrats for a trade war against China.